Retro Gaming Australia

The Sword of Hope 2 has been rated by the Australian Classification Board, with Nintendo listed as the publisher.

The Sword of Hope II is a RPG developed my Kemco and released in 1996 (North America) for the Game Boy, and it looks set for release as The Sword of Hope 2 on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console.

This will be the first time the title sees a release in PAL territories.

Nakayoshi to Issho (Nakayoshi ‘n Me) was a beginner RPG released late in the Famicom era that uses characters popularised by Nakayoshi Magazine such as Sailor Moon.

Previously exclusive to Japan (due to licenses and general apathy towards anime in the West at that time), Nakayoshi to Issho has recently undergone the translation treatment courtesy of Frizzy. You can get the patch here.

You control a character who has recently started work at Nakayoshi Magazine and has to traverse the various worlds from the mangas featured in the magazine. It’s a fairly simplistic game with few of the RPG trimmings – no experience points or turn battles here. Rather, everything is decided by a slot machine.

There are two versions of the patch available, featuring original and localised names for the Sailor Moon characters for those who are picky about that kind of thing.

Awesome Master System and Game Gear resource SMSPower has released another Game Gear prototype ROM, this time for the unreleased puzzle game Crazy Faces.

Crazy Faces was developed by The Kremlin, the studio responsible for Master System and Game Gear ports of games such as Desert Strike. It’s a slide puzzle game with a bit of a twist, in that you summon the pieces onto the play field. The sliding pieces can only be stopped by a wall or another piece, which makes things a little more complicated.

The game’s puzzles feature characters from games published by both Sega and Domark (who was set to publish the game).

Crazy Faces was due to be published in 1993, but was cancelled for reasons unknown.

Nomolos: Storming the Castle is a homebrew platformer for the Nintendo Entertainment System being developed by Gradual Games. You play as the cat Nomolos who must rescue his friend Snow.

The game is due to ship on May 15, but you can get a taste now via a demo ROM available on Gradual Games’ site.

A hundred cartridge run is being planned for release through Retro Zone. You can pre-order the game now – $US41 for a boxed version, or $US32 for a cartridge and manual.

Pokémon: Liquid Crystal, a Pokémon Crystal remake for the Gameboy Advance, is nearing completion and the current build (beta 3.1) is available for download.

The original Pokémon Crystal for the Gameboy Color offered players 251 catchable Pokémon, two regions to explore and 16 badges to earn. A ROM Hack of Pokémon Fire Red, Pokémon: Liquid Crystal is a remake and more – boasting 386 Pokémon to catch, three regions and now 20 badges to obtain. The remake presents the same story as the original, but with some additional twists. Pokémon: Liquid Crystal also features remixed and recomposed music, updated sprites and graphics that look much like the DS Pokémon iterations but without the polygons.

For those keen to play, you can visit the game’s development thread to obtain Pokémon: Liquid Crystal Beta 3.1 – you will need either an emulator or flash card for the Gameboy Advance or Nintendo DS to play it.

Expect to see the completed game by the end of the year.

Source: NeoGamr

Akira is something of a tragedy when it comes to the video game treatment. Every single game based on the anime masterpiece has been utter shit.

Now you can experience the game that started the tradition of terrible Akira games – the Famicom version. Developed by Taito and released in 1988, around the time of the film, Akira for the Famicom is an adventure game, picking up just after the point at which Kaneda and his gang are captured.

It’s pretty bad – even the notoriously generous Famicom gave the game a pathetic 17/40.

Translation group DankTrans was behind this effort. The game ROM needs to be expanded for the patch to work (due to the English translation taking up a lot more space than the Japanese original), so applying the patch is not quite as easy as normal.

You can get the patch here.

Flash games based on the original Super Mario Bros. are a dime a dozen, but Super Mario Summary does something totally unique – cutting the game’s 32 stages down into single screens.

The game was created by Swede Johan Peitz as part of Ludum Dare, a 48 hour game creation challenge event.

Each level has a number of challenges, with up to three stars to be obtained through collecting every coin, squashing every enemy and reaching the top of the flag pole when completing a level. Completing all three tasks gives you a time.

You can play the game here.

Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph follows the exploits of a video game villain (voiced by John C. Reilly) who wants to change his ways and become a hero.

The film is intended to be a spoof of video games, but will feature a number of cameos from existing characters, which Entertainment Weekly compares to cameos featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

One particular scene will feature Ralph in a video game villain support group, which will feature foes such as Street Fighter‘s Zangief and M. Bison, Coily the Snake from Q*Bert, Bowser from Super Mario Bros., Clyde from Pac-Man, Dr. Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog and the Resident Evil zombies.

Wreck-It-Ralph is due in theatres in November in North America, but won’t be on Australian screens until Boxing Day.

The upcoming Xbox Live Arcade release of Dragon’s Lair boasts a few neat little extras.

In addition to being based on the high definition version of the game, the XBLA port adds support for motion control via Kinect, as well as the usual assortment of achievements and avatars. There is also a “full watch” feature, if you’d rather just watch the game play itself.

You’ll be able to add Dragon’s Lair to your Xbox Live Arcade library on May 18th.

One of the slightly more baffling issues with the newly released PlayStation Vita has been the lack of PSOne compatibility. Sony has said that “they’re working on it”, but little has been mentioned since.

However, it appears that the Vita will see PSOne compatibility sooner rather than later. Recent PSOne Classics release Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has been spotted on the Vita PlayStation Store with a system menu icon unique to the Vita.

Attempting to play the game currently results in an error screen. Hopefully the issue will be corrected in the near future.